Klal Yisrael wasn’t what I expected to talk about with Rabbi Daniel Freelander. Social justice maybe, or Judaism’s prophetic legacy — those are more often the topics on a Reform agenda, which has been Freelander’s for the 39 years he’s worked at the Union for Reform Judaism.
But global Jewish solidarity? Really, what I thought we’d chat about was music — Freelander, along with fellow musician-songwriters Jeff Klepper and Debbie Friedman, was instrumental in changing the sound of Reform worship services in the 1970s and ’80s, from traditional hazzanut to guitars and song leaders.
But that wasn’t on Freelander’s mind when he bounded through the Bay Area last month. At 63, he is the new president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, barely five months on the job. Moving from second-in-command of America’s dominant Jewish stream to the head of what is still a marginal denomination outside North America involves quite a shift.
“How sui generis American Judaism is,” Freelander told me at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, where I caught up with him. “I never understood how different until I left the URJ for the World Union. We kvetch that we’re in crisis!” He shook his head and laughed.
My first and only job with the Reform movement was in 1991 in Jerusalem, where I helped write the monthly newsletter for the movement’s legal and political advocacy arm in Israel, the Religious Action Center. In those years, there were just a handful of Reform congregations in Israel, populated mostly by American immigrants, and the tone of our work was combative: a progressive David against the Goliath of Israel’s Orthodox rabbinate.
Today, while Freelander does not proclaim the battle for Reform rights in Israel to be over, he no longer sees the movement as struggling. After 40 years of shoring up the Israeli Reform movement financially — paying for its buildings, paying rabbis’ salaries —the World Union, he says, is “declaring success” in Israel.
Now he thinks it’s time to turn American Reform attention — and funding — to the rest of the Jewish diaspora, to make sure that every Jewish community around the world has non-Orthodox as well as Orthodox alternatives.
Freelander is not a Reform triumphalist. But he’s a serious believer in pluralism, in giving people real choices. So, for example, because the Conservative movement is strong in Latin America, he believes the Reform movement doesn’t need to compete there — a non-Orthodox option already exists. “In the future there will be halachic and non-halachic Judaism,” he says, predicting the collapse of denominations. “The labels we are stuck with are not 21st century; they are loaded terms.”
Now he’s directing the Reform lens eastward, to the former Soviet Union. That surprised me. Ten years ago, the Reform movement had six rabbis and a million-dollar annual budget for the entire FSU. Today, although the budget has doubled, there are still just six rabbis, compared with hundreds of Chabad rabbis. But Freelander has a fire in his belly. This time, he promises, the movement will do it differently. In the past, Russian-speaking rabbis were trained in London, Jerusalem or Berlin, and then would balk at returning home. Beginning this July, Reform rabbis-in-training will spend most of their time in Moscow, and even during their studies abroad will fly home regularly to serve student pulpits. “It’s a bit of social engineering,” Freelander said.
Moreover, the movement is not relying solely on rabbis. For more than a decade, it has been training community workers to lead Reform congregations through the Machon program. Sixty have graduated; 16 are already leading congregations. That program, too, is ramping up this summer.
This push in the former Soviet lands is part of the focus Freelander wants to place on klal Yisrael, so that Reform Jews join other Jews in taking responsibility for their brethren around the world. In the wake of the tragic murders of four French Jews at a kosher supermarket in Paris, American Jews seemed to care, if only for a moment, about their fellows in Europe. Deepening that sense of solidarity is one of his goals.
“Reform Judaism has really never taken responsibility [for Jews] outside of Israel,” he said.
Sue Fishkoff is the editor of J. and can be reached at [email protected].